Author Paul Chatterton, co-founder of Lilac (Low Impact Living Affordable Community), spoke to Routledge about his new book, Low Impact Living. This book is the inspirational story of one project that shows you how you can become involved in building and running your neighbourhood. Chatterton, along with other members of the community and the project team, explains how a group of people got together to build one of the most pioneering ecological, affordable cohousing neighbourhoods in the world.

Parametric Cost Modeling for Buildings describes a successful budgeting system for cost management and value engineering in construction based on accurate and early estimations of cost. We recently spoke with author Donald E. Parker about what led him to write the book and what he would like to see implemented as a result.

Building Regulations in Brief, written by Ray Tricker and Samantha Alford, is now available in its eighth edition, having undergone it’s most comprehensive revision to date. This popular and trusted guide to the building regulations has been updated to reflect all the latest amendments to Building Regulations, Planning Permission and the Approved Documents A, B, C, H, K, P, as well as Regulation 7, incorporating all amendments up to December 2013. This includes the changes to Leaflets L1A and L2A regarding the conservation of heat and energy in new buildings which came into effect April 2014, thus making the book as up to date as possible.

"One of the principal problems faced by property owners who are lay persons (i.e. in regard to property and construction matters) is not necessarily that they do not know all of the answers, but that they do not know all of the questions that they should be asking."

To assist designers who want to understand the principles behind the legislation, and perhaps more importantly to support the statutory authorities who must understand these principles, Routledge has just published the 4th edition of Fire from First Principles, a design guide to building fire safety. It has been fully updated, with all the current legislation and guidance, and now also includes a couple of contributed chapters covering the situation in the USA, Hong Kong and China. It assists the process of integration by outlining the fundamental principles of fire safety so that architects, building surveyors and others in the design team can work from first principles to ensure an integrated design, where safety is imperceptibly achieved without detriment to any of the other objectives.

Sustainability Appraisal is a sourcebook of the state-of-the-art of this rapidly emerging and diversifying area. It draws on a wealth of international experiences and approaches to illustrate the status and scope of Sustainability Appraisal/Assessment (SA) This comprehensive guide highlights how SA can be used to analyze and integrate the key environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainability into decision-making at all levels, from policy to project to investment, by government, business and industry, or international organizations.

Despite policy directives, standards and guidelines, indoor environmental quality is still poor in many cases. The Healthy Indoor Environment aims to help architects, building engineers and anyone concerned with the wellbeing of building occupants to better understand the effects of spending time in buildings on health and comfort.

Drawing on extensive internationally conducted research, from both industry and academia, the authors have written the essential PPP guide. Taking into consideration the perspectives of those in the public sector and the private sector, as well as built environment professionals, it is essential reading for anyone preparing to work on public private partnerships in construction. Read more...